Ucf Still Looking For A Road To Follow

Seventeen years after opening, the University of Central Florida suffers from all the symptoms of adolescence, unsure of its identity or destiny and pulled in many conflicting directions.

UCF is designed to teach students from an 11-county region but craves national fame. It is oriented to technical subjects but claims to be well- rounded. And it is extravagant in ambition but so poor that it sometimes cannot pay to make 5-cent copies of class materials.

Confused by such cross-purposes, UCF is misunderstood, inconsistent, frustrated and falls far short of its potential. The loss affects all of Central Florida because any university educates, attracts and helps people who shape its region.

As Central Florida's richest potential resource for intellectual, cultural and research activity, UCF is a major growth force, a means of enhancing the lives of all residents and making the area more attractive to businesses considering a move to the area.

A great university would mean a more enlightened community with a stronger economy and a more vibrant cultural life. But a great university needs an identity, and a clear identity is one thing UCF lacks.

''If you want to build a great university,'' says Peter Flawn, former president of the University of Texas, ''first you must decide what you want to be great at.''

Floundering is a long tradition at UCF. Its original goal was so complex that founding president Charles Millican, in a recent interview, had to think several minutes before he could describe it.

When the school opened in 1968, it was named Florida Technological University. It was promoted as an engineering school of national significance, a complement to the space program that had taken off at nearby Cape Canaveral. But Millican's original instructions did not even mention engineering, only well-rounded academics and professional schools ''for which a need could be justified and for which resources were available.''

Directions were not much clearer in 1985, when the best that president Trevor Colbourn could say about UCF's master plan was that it's a ''highly imaginative document.''

Colbourn tried to clarify the university's image when he changed its name in 1978, but the identity crisis persists. In a recent issue of The UCF Report for faculty and staff, a vice president said UCF should become ''one of the nation's leading comprehensive, regional universities.''

''Comprehensive,'' as state officials use the term, means a full range of undergraduate and graduate programs and professional schools like the University of Florida, which Colbourn insists he has no plans to copy.

''Regional'' means a limited number of programs designed to serve a limited area, which UCF has now.

VARIOUS DESCRIPTIONS

Ambiguity is rampant. Not even the people closest to the university agree on its character. Staff, supporters, legislators and state education officials describe it variously as:

-- A version of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the nation's premier engineering school, where the faculty includes five Nobel Prize winners and 83 members of the National Academy of Sciences.

-- Similar to Dartmouth College, a New Hampshire liberal arts college of such distinction that undergraduate courses are taught by a former assistant to Albert Einstein.

-- An aspiring University of Florida, the state's oldest and largest university, which has more than twice as many students as UCF, seven times as many doctoral degree programs and attracts 15 times as many research dollars. -- A should-be Georgia State University, which is barely known outside Atlanta but closely links its academic, research and cultural programs to the needs of its community.

-- A trade school such as Florida Institute of Technology at Melbourne, which teaches career skills but lacks the intellectual and artistic depth of a true university.

The dilemma:

Too poor to compete with MIT and lacking Nobel Prize winners or members of the National Academy of Sciences, UCF also cannot match the quality of education at Dartmouth, where the average freshman Scholastic Aptitude Test scores are more than 300 points higher, 1,300 compared with 993.

Too narrow academically to duplicate the University of Florida, UCF is not involved enough in the community to emulate Georgia State. And though it may seem like a trade school because its strongest programs are in professional and technical fields, UCF claims to be and works at being well- rounded.

UCF is perhaps best described by Charlie Reed, chancellor of the state university system, who calls it the ''best 17-year-old university in America.''

That sounds impressive enough to satisfy the UCF motto, ''Reach For The Stars,'' but prevents much comparison. Reed says he knows of only a few other 17-year-old universities, though he asserts that UCF is indeed better.